Knowing God's Plan: The Ramchal

• Hashem acting and illuminating to His creations – Those actions are His, though they are geared towards our reception. 
• His attributes don’t define His essence – for He is beyond comprehension. His actions are a chosen expression to relate to His creations.
• Reality in its present form is a muted form of the Perfection and G-dliness that He intends to reveal. It’s like a shadow on the wall – a revelation/expression of the real item, but in limited form.
• L’asid lavo Hashem will reveal the perfection and G-dliness inherent in reality itself (the shadow).
• In the interim, Hashem is animating, infusing, and guiding reality with a higher level of G-dliness, so that all arrives at the place of tikkun it needs to arrive at.
• Part of this guidance includes the idea that evil itself, evil human choices included lead to the ultimate good.
• Two aspects to tzimtzum: According to the briah, and allowing us room to perfect ourselves.
• To every action of history there are two elements: One revealed and one hidden. The revealed element relates to the realm of free will, where wars are instigated on the whims of evil men. The second element relates to Hashem’s guiding the world to its perfection. Hashem, in His infinite wisdom moves matters about in elaborate and wondrous ways, so that each action taken by human beings, and each “natural consequence” taken by humans have the miraculous effect of bringing the world one step closer to perfection.
• The time of Mashiach/world-to-come will reveal to us how each step of history let to the most incredible goodness.
• Let’s recall the purpose of the pursuit of Daas Tveno is V’hasehvosa el levovecha: The connection of all to one unified reality is the system of kabbalah and appreciating it gives us a new and deeper understanding of emuna in Hashem. However, the ultimate goal of v’hashevosa el levovecha is to connect emuna to our minds and hearts on a day-to-day basis. The work of da’as tevunos allows us to connect with the inner essence — Hashgacha – leading everything to a state of tikkun. To understand that reality and history are direct expressions of Divinity. 

• gilui yichudo Why is the christian idea of G-d (R’L) forsaking Jews part of the 5 heresies that gilui yichudo addresses?
• Last week we addressed it from the angle of how Hashem isn’t bound by the actions of man. Taking this a step further: The Jewish people received the Torah and have the most constant choice to live with Hashem’s Will or choose their own will. When Hashem brings the world to perfection despite our worst choices we see His absolute Mastery. When we see how the Jewish nation is downtrodden, we should not despair! The greater the illusion that evil is on the rise, the greater the display of G-d’s Mastery when He strikes it down.
• Free will, which requires the world as we know it, isn’t the end goal, if it were, that would contradict G-d’s Oneness, so to speak, and mean that He is giving this world to man for eternity. That isn’t the case. Free will, and with it the possibility of abandoning the Jews for their failure to use their free will properly, is a temporary state. The day will yet come when it will be natural for man to follow the Will of his Creator, for in fact that is the most natural and beneficial thing for man to do. (Mashal with robotics).
• (Sfas Emes) “The purpose of free will is to negate free will.” Because the ultimate purpose is to display that only Hashem’s Will stands, to the exclusion of all else, including free will. 
• This great benefit is available to the individual even today, all we need to do is recognize the Oneness of Hashem. For each day we choose between the illusion of our control and ability to do as we please and the reality of Hashem’s Will. 
• Adam’s choice: Ignore the illusion of equality between following G-d’s Will and ignoring G-d’s Will, or follow the illusion to its logical and self-destructive conclusion.
• The day will come when, for once and for all, man will see the fallacy of choosing anything other than G-d’s Will, for there is nothing but G-d’s Will.
• The plan B rule: Intellectual faith vs experiential.
• Climate change/generational decline etc
• Second to last paragraph in 40: There’s increasingly greater dysfunction in the world, but when Hashem reveals Himself man’s intellectual and emotional world will be straightened out, and the world will recalibrate to its tikkun.
• The idea that there is olam hazeh and olam habah, two distinct periods with very different purposes, and one leads into the other, but sof maaseh b’machshavah techilah – so work and reward, G-d’s mastery and man’s free Will all become one beautifully harmonious system.

Was Spinoza’s G-d (so to speak) compatible with Torah?

• There’s a notion that the people of the book took their studios nature and became doctors. Meaning, the tikkun olam we bring to the world is nothing else than being the most productive and contributing members of an inclusive society that is all embracing to all. As we study tonight, let’s see if anything jumps out to either support or contradict this notion.
• You work hard and you succeed, true or false?
• Why are so many committed to Torah study?

Why is the christian idea of G-d (R’L) forsaking Jews part of the 5 heresies that the revelation of G-d's Oneness addresses?

• Everything we see is G-d = Holiness. But free will mandates that we won’t easily see G-d, in fact we’ll see the opposite. But internally, all is kedusha and Hashem. That’s the relationship between man and G-d, that’s revelation. The end goal is the revelation of G-d on ever increasing levels.
• Einstein's joy x infinity.

G-d is everywhere you look for Him.

The work lies in working past the various curtains that conceal His presence.

If G-d were to reveal his infinite Kindness or wisdom we would be overwhelmed. But we finite beings CAN appreciate who and what is not the true G-d, Creator of Heaven and Earth. In doing away with the false gods and ideologies, we discover that G-d is indeed with us in all of our life's experiences, in nature, and in history.

• What are we trying to understand? Darkei Hashgacha, the purpose of history, by extension the purpose of reality, for reality exists to undergo the cycle of history
• Hence Ramchal begins not with Hashem being the ultimate good/Chok Hatov l’heitiv, but with the situation of man, as that is the center of the structure of world history
• Once we appreciate where man fits in, we can go back and ask ourselves the broader question of why Hashem created man to be the creator of his own perfection.
• We think of good being a self contained concept. Meaning, there isn’t necessarily another person present to enjoy the lemonade and beach, in fact they may just disturb peace :). But upon further reflection, we realize that without someone to share the good with our good is meaningless. Going one step deeper, the good is a shared experience, but the ‘other’ is in fact Hashem. Not to say that we can retire to a mountaintop to experience the ‘other’ in the purest form. The only way to truly connect to Hashem, as we will see, is to be as ‘like Him’ as possible — and that means fully engaging in the giving process, whether as a giver or as an enabler/receiver. 
• Being a giver is akin to “paying it forward”
• Hashem being the ultimate good wanted to give of His good, and what better way to do so then to allow Man to work his way back to Hashem
• The contradiction between Derech Hashem and Da’at Tevunot.
• Rabbi N Gottlieb it isn’t a contradiction, embarrassment, as the Yerushalmi says causes the recipient to look away — it’s all about the relationship.
• Still, why did Ramchal only emphasize this point in Derech Hashem, whereas in all the other sefarim he simply says the nahama d’kesufa issue, which seems so much less satisfying?
• In Derech Hashem Ramchal is talking in isolation in a nutshell what is tachlis habriah. The Derech Hashem is about many different topics. He therefore didn’t have the luxury of saying nahama d’kisufa and leaving it at that.
• The same goes for mesilas yesharim, a mussar oriented work, where Ramchal opens by saying, closeness to Hashem is good, and man is tasked with creating that good for himself — Ramchal highlights the relationship between man and G-d, but without asking too many philosophical questions, as that isn’t the purpose of the work.
• Daas Tevunos and all other sefarim are describing the Kabbalistic system, a description of reality where the key element is the relationship between creation and its Creator — whose Perfectly unified Will unifies all of reality. In most of Ramchal’s works, writing that the recipient is embarrassed to look at the giver, or even that the gift is imperfect, is enough for us to understand the lack inherent in the gift as being a fundamental issue, not an ancillary issue. 

• Brief intro to the Ramchal
• Challenge: Rav Hirsch on why philosophical inquiry in the incorporeality of G-d and His unity is a waste of time. 
• Ramchal (See second pg of intro), 3 reasons, 1. Obligation to understand the ways of Hashem 2. To allow us to settle our minds in our faith that all happens for the good etc 3. To appreciate the significance of the mitzvos.
• Rav Hirsch alludes to the significance of taamei hamitzvos vis vis kabbalah
• For the moment, my primary objective is reason # 2. Many of us are advanced in respective fields, and widely read, but what does authentic Torah tradition have to say about the problems of faith? 
• V’hashevosa el l’vavecha means to broaden our horizons to include a framework and structure for seeing the world through Hashem’s eyes.
• Ramchal in Maamar Havikuach: Understanding the interface between G-d and man.
• Too often, we simply leave everything beyond our own understanding to “it’s beyond me”. Ramchal provides us with a framework that allows us to begin to see a system.
• Ramchal (opening of Klach) Kabbalah is one thing: Understanding how everything comes from God
• Being open to hearing G-d’s version of things via the tradition of the Torah, prophets and scholarly, though divinely sanctioned interpretations. 
• Listen first, and try and see how it impacts your worldview second…

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